As readers open up the first page of the book of Mosiah, they enter a whole new part of the Nephite record. Having enjoyed the Small Plates of Nephi with their first-person accounts, prophecies and explanations of Nephi, Jacob, and Jacob’s descendants, readers enter the world of the Large Plates of Nephi and other records that have been organized into the series of books named after Nephite leaders, from King Mosiah, to Alma the Younger (who was both the chief judge and high priest), Alma’s son Helaman (high priest and leader of the stripling warriors), Alma’s grandson Helaman, Alma’s great-grandson Nephi, on down until the records were entrusted to Mormon. Mosiah, Alma, and Mormon all may have played roles in shaping the book of Mosiah. And thus, the questions, "Who wrote the book of Mosiah?" and "Who put this book together, and why?" are fascinating to ponder.
The overall structure of the book of Mosiah is interesting. It begins with the great and righteous King Benjamin. Then, in the very middle of the book, we encounter the lethal showdown between the prophet Abinadi and the wicked King Noah, together with the conversion of Alma the Elder, who at that time was still a young man. The book ultimately ends with the Nephites getting rid of kingship altogether. The book of Mosiah seems to be deliberately constructed in order to prove the point that kingship is a good system when the kings are like Benjamin but a bad system when they are like Noah.
That much appears obvious enough. But one still may ask, who wrote this book? It seems that Mormon probably did not abridge the text of this book very much, if at all. At least that’s my view. When we read Benjamin’s Speech, for example, the voice, the vocabulary, and the vision do not seem to reflect any of Mormon’s personal influences.
Alma the Younger, however, strikes me as a main candidate who may have assembled the underlying pieces to create the book of Mosiah. He had access to all the records. He became the Chief Judge, and he would have needed to explain how he got there. After all, he was not even born in Zarahemla. So, how had he become the Chief Judge, the High Priest, and the Commander-in-Chief of the army in the land of Zarahemla?
Mosiah’s four sons probably had little to do with the creation of this book. They had been away for fourteen years on a mission which, from a political perspective, looks like a voluntary exile. Although they were still the sons of Mosiah, they were no longer heirs-apparent. In Zarahemla, shortly after Alma became the leader, there arose the king-men who wanted to bring kingship back. Alma the Younger almost lost his life in the ensuing war, as he personally defended and solidified the new political system. So it is unlikely that Ammon or any of the other sons of Mosiah would have written this book after they returned from their fourteen-year mission, long after the death of their father.
Assuming that Alma the Younger was the compiler of this book, other questions yet remain. Why would he have included certain episodes? Why were certain stories told, and why were they told in the way that they were? Alma would have been personally interested in the story of his father’s conversion, knowing that Abinadi was speaking the truth. Alma the Younger admired King Benjamin for many reasons. Just as Benjamin was visited by the Angel of the Lord, so was Alma. And Alma the Younger had a special interest in the four sons of King Mosiah. These were his friends growing up. Together, their lives were changed as they became disciples of Jesus Christ.
The book of Mosiah was assembled from several independent documents, and its stories are not presented in chronological order. In fact, the showdown between King Noah and Abinadi (embedded in a first flashback in Mosiah 9–22) probably happened 20 or 30 years earlier than the end of King Benjamin’s life. Another flashback in Mosiah 23–24 is based on a record of Alma the Elder about the deliverance of his people from afflictions they suffered before finding their way into the capital city of Zarahemla. So readers of the book of Mosiah are not given a normal, sequential history. And, indeed, several thematic threads run through this multi-layered and multi-voiced text. Yet the book is held together coherently by the indelible interests and urgent tasks borne by Alma the Younger (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Welch, John W., and Greg Welch. "Flashbacks in the Book of Mosiah." In Charting the Book of Mormon: Visual Aids for Personal Study and Teaching. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1999, chart 29.
John W. Welch, The Legal Cases in the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: BYU Press, 2008), 140–145.
Gordon C. Thomasson, "Mosiah: The Complex Symbolism and Symbolic Complex of Kingship in the Book of Mormon,"Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 2, no. 1 (1993): 32–36